The Curse of Kayaking

I'd like to write about this one time I went for a kayaking course. In fact, it was the only time, so that narrows it down quite a bit.

Kayaking, for a tall person, is an exhilirating ordeal. On one hand, you're bobbing up and down on the waves, feeling the wind on your sunburnt face, with the closest sign of civilization being the barge that's coming awfully close to you- OH SHIT, while on the other hand, what you wouldn't give if you could just STAND UP for a second and stretch those cramped legs.

Your legs, you see, have to be bent outward so they look form a erogenous diamond in between them. Bracing your knees against the side of your kayak helps you make sure that you're absolutely balanced. Trying the alternative to this, if it can be called that, usually results in some impressive kayak drifting, which would be a lot more satisfying if any of it were intentional.

So you're condemned to having your feet stuck in the same position for hours on end, and if you're sasquatch-like from the ankles down like me, then you'll have no choice but to uncomfortably squirm to change your foot positioning in the claustrophobic space available. It comes as a particularly painful blow when you raft up with the rest of the trainees, which involves paddling next to each other and grabbing the sides of each others' boats to form a giant floating waffle so your instructors can tell you precisely what you were doing wrong earlier, and the short guy next to you just crossed his legs in his kayak. At that point I couldn't help but notice that he didn't have his paddle properly secured, and the instructor wasn't looking.

Well, no. I never did grab and toss that guy's paddle (wiggles eyebrows), but since then I've never taken standing up for granted, or forgotten my horror upon learning that the kayaks we used in the course were the SECOND-smallest variety.

Assigned Acts

I'm part of a Drama Club in school, and we do plays, in between our administration-assigned... assignments that we get every national occasion. These usually involve coming up with plays that reveal the wondrous origins and nature of celebrations whose wondrous origins and nature have been revealed to us since we were six years old and were yet to discover the wonders of nature that we would at the age of 12 or so.

We're not generally worried about whether or not these plays will be received well, since everything's dead set on going a specific route since the points of time at which they're assigned to us. The contents, and very often the plot, are pretty much expected to be of a certain kind, and the reaction of the audience, if you really want to call it one at all, is generally the same as last year's: Excitement nearly rivaling that of the performers', unless someone's humiliated onstage, in which case it suddenly becomes the best damn play since the other one where Sam got called a girl, or something along those lines.

To sum it all up, the audience's boredom, or at least, their disinterest in what's supposed to be the subject matter of these plays, is always anticipated and quite distressingly, usually ignored. This is where things get ridiculous. The same plays are churned out year after year in schools everywhere, or at least everywhere in this country, and the whole thing ends up looking like tossing stale doggy biscuits at a puppy that always smack it in the head because it's busy ravenously devouring your sofa instead.

So what is it with assigned, occasion-based school plays that make them as appealing as soggy crackers?

Well, to start with, as mentioned before, it's the repetition. The same objectives, the same delivery, the same morals for each play for a a particular occasion. The audience can't ever feel suspense or curiosity when they're already smelling their palms and shaking their heads, muttering "Here we go. Educational play again..." They already know what the play's about and they already hate it before you begin.

Then there's the revolting cheese that accompanies every one of these plays, that sickening skin-invading chill that's bundled with them. The culprit's really the objectives and morals of these plays, which are politically correct and so government sponsored to the point where, whether rationally or not, people can't help but dismiss it. I don't know why opinions promoted by authority are always so unappetizing, but they just are, so performers always end up as "the admin's bitch". Sad and depressingly true.

So how do we save plays for national events, and do we want to? Well, we should. The occasions themselves haven't gotten stale, it's just that the same discussions about them are held every time. So if anything's going to save these skits besides Saxton Hale, it's variety in the way the subject matter is presented and discussed. Which means that we’ve got to move away from reading facts off checklists and going through all the “good” and “bad” perspectives and start presenting some of our own opinions: offbeat, tangent ideas that can be subjected to the ridicule of hundreds.
Why not? They’re better than reciting the same maxims over and over, and they make it clear to the audience that for once, perspectives are no longer restrained to the recommended few. This opens up the possibility of audience involvement, since once audience members realize that opinions just as “improper” as theirs are legitimate, there’s little besides the chronic fear of public speaking and prospect of humiliation that might hold them back, but that’s not really the point. The point is that breaking conventional play objectives will make these plays more intelligent, if not at least more entertaining to the audience.

But there’s an atrocious obstacle in the way. There’s always the possibility that someone in a group of over a thousand, or thousands in other schools (because let’s not forget that we’re a high school/junior college/anonymous schizophrenic group the size of a playgroup), is going to say something that pisses someone off, whether such responses may be rational or not.

But what’s important to note is that such problems are caused by individual ignorance and aren’t the fault of the performers or the administration. For some reason, however, schools administrations are still willing to take measures to prevent this by cutting out content that might incite such problems. That may appear to solve the problem but what it really is is paranoia, sacrificing what might be interesting and engaging content for the sake of eliminating the possibility of any situations later on that could be easily clarified. The option of distancing the views of the institution with those of an individual’s has always been there and it ought to be used.

In addition to the random heckler though, there’s also the risk of the play’s actual content being considered “objectionable” by certain members of the audience, or better yet, by the parents of certain members of the audience. So quite understandably, the administrations of many schools take the safe route, slicing out content that may be “potentially offensive”, or just taking the much shorter route and put bullets through the heads of any plays with such content. But while that’s an understandable reaction meant to conserve institutional image, the problem is that a clear line separating the “potentially offensive” from the acceptable doesn’t exist. No firm boundaries are drawn in the censorship process, and what might be removed from a play may be dependant on the personal opinions and unease of those responsible. This means that script writers are subject to inconsistent, and very often rather paranoid, scrutiny and restrictions.

We’ve just been assigned an orientation play that’s to be held in… well, January next year, and I don’t want to see another play that makes me chomp on my arm again. The title we’ve been given is “Life in NUS High”, and it’s evident that they want this to be a positive, cheery portrayal of a fun and educational lifestyle. Well, bugger that. Any quirks, problems or even redeeming qualities that you find in your current life in NUSHs, go ahead and slap them on the tagboard, because seeing that discussed in a play would be cool.

A bunch of friends I know (As opposed to…? Never mind that.) apparently had the recent misfortune of watching numerically appealing movie 2012. According to them, it’s every disaster movie rolled into one wholesome Katamari, which is then repeatedly rolled into your face until you get a strong sense of rather accurate déjà vu.

Whilst they didn’t actually mention Katamari, they did give it a generally negative review, but I’ve no way of telling whether they’re right or were simply on helium at the time of watching and found counting their fingers more entertaining. Helium aside, there’s always the factor of personal preference. What my bunch of gas-loving mates found to be a long environmentalist boogeyman may be a thought provoking an- Alright, just for the sake of the argument, let’s assume we’re not talking about 2012. But the point is, I may very well worship what they consider an undesirable influence on young adults.

Which makes movie reviews, which is based around the whole business of telling people what films to watch and why, all the more stranger. Spoiling what you’d consider a terrible movie isn’t frowned upon, and may in fact be considered a public service. But spoiling a good film is bound to get you stoned to death, unless it happens to be a classic, in which case you’ll probably just be hideously embarrassed. But it’s very uncomfortable making that judgment based on your subjective opinion only, which is all you have to go by, really. So movie critics, or critics of any sort of medium with a plot, have to describe bits of the stories they review to justify why they like it or think of it as oddly good fuel, all while being careful not to spoil too much of anything.

But ultimately, though a critic can fan flames whichever way he wants as much as he likes, it’s really still up to the reader (Or watcher. Reviews in multiple forms of media are making this confusing and very meta.) to decide whether he wants to watch, read or play whatever’s being reviewed. So what exactly should reviewers and critics do?

They need to supply enough information about the stories they review to let potential audiences decide whether the subject matter might appeal to them, talking about themes, atmosphere and acting while avoiding too much exposition, and that’s when criticism may very well border on being the subject of criticism itself.

The Aiiee of the Storm

People are a fussy lot. Give them glorious servings of almost commercially cheery sunshine and they call it sweltering. Respond by sprinkling a little bit of rejuvenating rainfall and they call it beastly, even going so far as to refer to that meteorological wreck of a place, London.

So it really shouldn't have been much of a surprise that after months of squeaking about how the rainfall quota was far from fulfilled, that they would just let rip with rain and cram a month's rainfall into a period of twenty four hours, like an inexplicably pseudo-American Australian Asian student cramming what should have been six years worth of studying into a weekend. And like any other attempt of the like, both ended up with uncontrollable bouts of sobbing, with the interesting point that both were occurring nation-wide.

In fact, both are uncomfortably relatable topics to me because I'm currently in the midst of both, standing in a bus stop whose architects never heard of combinations of rain and WIND, sobbing about my lack of Chinese vocabulary while wishing that the heavens weren't doing the same.

I've just gotten on a number 198 bus, having made a heroic dash through the gauntlet of rainfall from the bus stop to the entrance of the bus. This bit of getting on and off buses in the rain is another sneaky bit of work by the architects who seem to be determined in getting you wet (Ho Yay). If you've somehow managed to evade the cleansing spray of pristine rain water and the waves of tried and tested road water that's filthy enough to negate any appeal the rain water might have offered, then congratulations, assassin from feudal Japan, but let's see you get through THIS.

But nitpicking aside, the storm that I'm seeing outside of the bus and inside of the world right now, yes, I think it's proven itself enough to be called a storm because really, wow, it's enough to be described as a doozy of a storm, has got to be one of the most intimidating ones I've been in. It's like an eccentric fireworks maker collaborating with a SWAT team. I actually got thrown off by a flash of lightning, actually had to shut my eyes because of the brightness. Also, adding to the storm's organization analogy there, both the fireworks maker and SWAT team have consulted a psychologist for knowing the best time to chuck in some thunder after the victim recovers from the lightning flash prior to that and thinks it's safe to start thinking again.

It's really an impressive, frightening maestro of a storm and the sort that makes you wonder if maybe, just maybe, those crazy anti-global warming environmentalists might be right after all, and if they're going to spit out the proverbial phrase that stings more than any hearty bout of heavenly hell-raising: WE TOLD YOU SO.

A Rich Atmosphere

The evening might have been described as clear, but "blank" was really a much better word. The sky wasn't really unobstructed. It was more as if the powers that be hadn't quite decided on the aerial agenda for the day. This, some realized, was the astronomical version of being put on hold, and the dreadful prospect of the astronomical version of holding music was briefly considered before being dropped like a fluorescent light that a kid who thought would be really fun to swing around in the dark had dropped, the only difference between the analogy and the analogy's non analogy being that the concept of celestial holding music does nothing for you in the dark but make you have the tendency to mumble.

The air, on the other hand, blurred the boundaries between breathing and suffocating; being so thick that looking up and performing the breaststroke would get you near anywhere, the exception, of course, being places with fresh air, since the lack of anything to push against once you got to pristine places generally meant that you really wouldn't have to DIG your own grave when you went. You just went without much hassle. As such, the inhabitants of areas with air that doesn't get in the way of reading generally use aircraft as a means of aerial transportation, but also as a means of achieving the secondary goal of eventually no longer having to use them.

Days where these conditions were evident were becoming so common that eventually, people might just assume it had always been this way and stop making a big fuss out of it. Which was why people were making as much of a fuss as they could now, while others wondered if they had really ever breathed what could be truly called “air”.

What we have here is...

The following is an entry written at seven in a morning that I would describe for authenticity's sake as being "bleeding". At the airport, where even a delicious Big Breakfast from Mac's did nothing to stem my grouchiness at the time.

I've just realized, and by just, I mean at around six thirty in the morning in Terminal 3 of the airport, that I get all these great writing ideas at ungodly hours of the night/morning, but at those times my body really isn't capable of understanding "these artistic types" and just can't be bothered putting them into tangible form. So really, my brain's like a writer with a terribly lazy publisher that only operates whenever the brain doesn't, and when it does finally ask my brain for its writing ideas they're already lost underneath stacks of formulas for standard distribution curves and Kotaku news feeds.

So there you go. The startling story of a ruined creative industry in my head.

But maybe sometime in the holidays, like everything else I've wanted to try, I'll get up at at 5 at the morning, abuse my authority as major bodily stockholder and throw my body into my brain's working room and, in a strange physiological inversion, not let it out of there until it comes out with something. Anyone in favor of doing this as a conglomerate, go ahead and poke me, and don't forget to mention why you're doing it.

A Tentatively Apocalyptic Morning

A wedge of sandy orange light pried my eyes open, not so much as apologizing for the unsavory experience before it pointed out that the celestial bodies were generally in an apocalyptic sort of mood at the moment. They'd apparently had enough of the little blue git, infested with all manner of parasites that they'd told him time and time again to get rid of. He'd apparently grown attached to the swarming abominations and disturbingly enough, didn't seem to mind it when they called him "Mother Earth". This had greatly upset Mars and Venus who were generally very adamant about the clear definition of genders, not that that had anything to do with them since they were planets, but minor details like those certainly weren't going to stop them being filled with righteous fury.

I had discovered this intragalatic dispute when I stepped out of my hostel room and took a quick glance at the sky. The sky was a bright orange, and in between the sun and us was a thick veil of dust that might have suggested that it was probably time for humanity to start going back to their nomadic roots and start living in giant sandcrawlers while scavenging off the ruins of prior civilization for a living. The sky was now an expansive desert of nothingness, the dust in the air passing off for sand and making the sun seem a lot more sweltering than it would have alone.

The desert was complete with bedrock, bedrock that tended to grumble a lot and spit lightning into its giant planet of a spitoon and wasn't quite content with being where it currently was. It spread, its blackness slowly contaminating the nearby orangeness and very soon, you had to look for the orange in the sky before you saw it, which meant that if you unaware of the orangeness to begin with then you would proably lost out on a lot of it.

But it had made a crucial publicity error. It spread so much, became so prevalent that it no longer drew any attention. It became the backdrop for a sky that was filled with nothing but itself, and everyone eventually ignored it. It didn't take this too well. It left, taking the furnace-like shades of orange and the fog of dust with it, leaving behind a vibrantly blue and slightly confused sky by three o'clock in the afternoon.

The weather, if anything, is erratically bipolar.

No U

It's one of those little things that's always bothered me that would have made for an excellent and intellectually stimulating conversation practically made for accompaniment by a glass of red wine if it weren't for the fact that nearly everyone I know is under the legal drinking age. So that's made me grab this topic, shove it in a bag and throw it in a trunk, lock that trunk then sit on it indirectly with fifteen art history manuscripts as the middlemen, but now, despite still being under the legal drinking age, I'd like to talk about the use of hypocrisy as a defence.

Suppose someone accused someone else of performing something absolutely dastardly, something shamelessly unethical or so far on the opposite end of the spectrum that it deserves a smack on the head, just as a good follow up of matyrdom, like every saint should. The accused then breaks into a smirk, grin, or befittingly of his saint status, an enlightened and gentle smile and says,

"Well, aren't you one to talk?"

His will is done, and the aspiring prosecutor joins Rowan Atkinson on the path from a life of wonder and splendor to that of a linguistically retarded man with an unsettling attraction to teddy bears. He now looks like a moron and the formerly accused is now free to continue his work, but now with double the satisfaction and a huge smirk on his face.

But even aside from the fact that his accuser may have been guilty of hypocrisy, it still doesn't change the fact that the accused hasn't in fact defended himself from anything. He hasn't in anyway refuted the incoming accusation in anyway and he might as well just have pointed how ugly his adversary's tie was, and how ties are a bad idea in general.

And this might all seem well enough and self-explanatory in an over-the- top, one dimensionally portrayed incident like this, but in real life, which tends to have a lot more dimensions and thus a lot more space for the important stuff to get lost in, pointing out that an adversary is guilty of hypocrisy and then shimmying away from the dispute without having to actually defend yourself, and you can do all of that under cheery applause.

I realize that all of this really has a place in Latin terminology so sophisticated it has to be italics: Ad hominem tu quoque. But what I'd like to call attention to is the mind-blowing ease in which it can be performed and the frequency with which it happens.

Then again, I've probably done that several times myself, but I'm not sure that's the point.

Edit: I realized that the fancy Latin phrase that I said had to be in italics was in fact NOT in italics. So yeah. I just went back and edited it in hopes that no one would notice. Then I explicitly wrote an update note at the end.

Write...

Just yesterday I started writing that dreaded extended essay and I did a little bit of a double take, followed by an intense five minute yawning session. The stuff I wrote was some of the most tasteless bran I'd ever written. If any piece of writing had to come with a glass of water, this would be it.

I can't remember the last time I wrote anything that was particularly insightful, but then again, maybe no one does either. (Well, that was depressing. Never doing that again.)

Should probably dust off the old notepad that doesn't actually physically exist but shh it's an expression. Start writing out whatever first comes to mind and see what dark crannies that leads to.

Tiiiiooooommmaaaannnn

Posts I wrote during the Tioman trip, in an air conditioned resort room next to the comfortable open air balcony that doesn't try to freeze the living shit out of anything in it, posts that are probably utterly irelevant by this point but that I'm still going to put up anyway.

Day 1

Today's the first day of the bet.

In the elevator, felt a little bit woozy. I'm sure that this is in no way indicative of my future status today.

I've noticed that while Cancy has coffee in her bag, she hasn't drunk it, whereas I've already begun not drinking coffee. Clearly this is why she thought she was going to win. I figure that if I can last till the hyperactivity kicks in for her, it'll be a home stretch all the way.

The sounds of garbled conversations and Bob imparting Malaysian wisdom to all around him and the humming of the bus are... Soothing.

Yellow Submarine is infinitely better as a song you're on a moving bus staring at the sea.

Apparently Cancy drank the cup of coffee and then fell alseep. But coffee takes a while to kick in. It also wasn't a cup of coffee by my prescription so I'm going to try and badger her into drinking another later on.

Watching clouds moving past other clouds in the sunlight. I'm not sure anything beats that.

The ferry is tiny, and it tries to make the trip shorter by freezing its passengers till they get there. But then the boat starts rocking a bit, and that makes up for everything.

I'm writing this as I lie in a comfortable, uncomfortably enough, double bed, but essentially, I'm skeptical that this is in fact primarily an ecology field trip. The food's good, the room's are beyond anything we thought we'd get, and all our rooms are all on stilts and suspended above a scenic pond. I sat there and watched it for a good ten minutes and birds swept down and glanced the water just for dramatic effect before smugly flying away. So the accomodation's wonderful, if not touristy down to the last overpriced detail.

About the fairly minor ecology aspect of this trip, we constructed our Ber-something funnels, made to chase insects out of leaf litter we collected into bottles of soapy water that are to insects what vats of acid are to government agents, with the exception that they actually succeed in killing what they set out to kill.

A while after that we treked over to a forest and planted our eggs while we raked up wads of leaves to the melodious sounds of "O nom nom nom" and "Guns don't kill people".

During dinner, with a complete absence of any leaf litter whatsoever, the kind resort staff supplied customers with a pot of piping coffee at the buffet spread. I decided at the time, for some reason, to point this out to Cancy who very politely enquired if I wanted some. I declined even more politely and started thinking about nothing but the merits of tea for the next few minutes.

I actually intend to start drinking leaf water as a substitute for the bean solution that I love. At least I'll get some sort of hot stimulant in the morning.

Day 2


Can trees go above the canopy? We spent hours measuring trees and we still have no idea. More of a question for the philosophers.

We trekked back to the same spots in the same forest to measure the height and diameter of trees this time. Ants apparently found this objectionable and expressed this in the most dental way possible.

Snorkelling afterward was best described as a tune to the sound of salt water entering nasal cavities, people gawking at the fish circumventing them, and people emulating fishy schoal behaviour but with a camera.

Tragically, the forest night walk was replaced with what sounded like a fairly uninteresting return to the intertidal regions and mangrove. We later found out from those bored or interested enough to go that they ventured down to the mouth of the mangrove's river and saw igneous rock and sand.

Igneous sand is black in color. I don't think I need to explain how this variation in colour is the most awesome thing that could be done with sand.

Day 3


Today was really more of a wrap up than anything else. We went back to collect our quail eggs and got readings indicating that the spots we picked were essentially quail refugee zones. We walked down a bit to one of the other team's sites and found out that that was bollocks, of course. Where one of the teams once had two eggs in their petri dish, they now had three significantly smaller ones.

Leaf litter was also sorted through. At least, I assume it was, since I was busy trying to guess what Vera meant by "the opposite of Malay", which according to her is Indian. A few moments later she was equally confused as us as to why this was so, so it's all good in the end. Taboo is excellent for exposing politically incorrect beliefs.

A while later we were told to embark on a photographic treasure hunt for some organism or the other. My group knew the trauma associated with spending twenty minutes on the first clue and mopping up the remaining eight in fifteen minutes, which I’m sure we all still insist is the fault of the lycan growing on the tree right next to the bar in which we were given the clue which was way too discrete about its lycanthropy for its own damn good. In any case, after we ran to and from the bar where the teachers lazily supervised us in between sips of their martinis, we had the rest of the day to ourselves.

Ideally, the immediate to do would be to gather up a bunch of mates and proceed to scour every reachable inch of the island for amazing sights that we weren’t shown just to demonstrate the monotony of our education system. The problem then was that either a good majority of us had already thought of that an hour before the rest of us did and had already fallen down the crevices of some obscure rock formation elsewhere or had conspired to hide in their rooms and not answer the doors, because Cancy, Adhit and I couldn’t find Dom, Movin or Divya, and there was the general consensus amongst the people that could be found that the people they were looking for couldn’t be found either.

We couldn’t find anyone in the resort, so we figured that we’d try the beaches since we’d been talking about faffing about near the mouth of the nearby mangrove’s river.

All we found at the beaches and the mouth of the river were, respectively, the beaches and the mouth of the river.

So all in all, no people, but still a good find.

























Went back a while later to find out from Kylie, who we’d passed by earlier on, that Dom, Divya, Aaron and Movin had shimmied over to the mouth of the river AFTER we left. Movin’s inexplicable disappearance was explained by him creeping over to the nearby forest and swimming in a natural pool by the trail we took earlier on. Dom had declined time alone with Movin based on the prospect of parasites in the water. Movin, being naturally repugnant to all forms of parasites, swam about for a good hour before heading over to join the others in saltier water.

It is not Dyiiiiing

In about seven minutes, my phone would have unwillingly transferred all of its photos over to my computer, and saved all contacts to its SIM card, and beyond that, it will be laid to rest in a casket of one-time-use plastic and other materials intent on the destruction of the planet. There, it will lie in silence, contemplating the days in which it had a purpose, and the companionship of some wanker who subjected it to all manner of unfair acrobatics and kept whipping it out and pointing it in the direction of the unforgiving rays of the Sun.

It will contemplate the seething ungratefulness that came with comments about the sub-standard quality of its speakers, the unnnecessary hardness of most materials used for paving floors, and the terrifying, moist embrace of an adolescent's lipid-coated face.

And now it will be swapped out for a new model, a superior model, fresh faced and eager to be of service, not knowing yet knowing the terrors of the sweaty trouser pocket and the subtle yet unspeakable torment of dust from the hostel windows, nor the communal sighs of every phone that it passes by, who all remember the days in which they emerged from their motherly packaging into the world newborn.

Even in the last moments of its life it is told to pile its legacy into the trophy cupboards of other electronic devices, those bastards.

But despite all these transgressions commited against this kindly courier, it submits to fate. Partially because it's a phone and it doesn't have a damn say in the matter, but also because it knows that it's done its duty. It's dutifuly played catchy Beatles songs when told to, it's captured glorious suns because no camera was around, and it's saved its person from many a chemistry lesson through shamelessly downloaded mobile games.

Maybe it's also had enough of hanging around with people who pretend to read the minds of electronic devices, but that's just wild speculation.

But now we must part, faithful mobile, and though I shed tears that are suspiciously close in chemical composition to eye drops, parting will be made easier by the fact that I remember you and your services, from the day that Steph called you "champagney" to this very moment.

Fare thee well, K530i.

PS: In all lightheartedness though, it was a decent phone and quite stylish, so thank you Sony Ericsson.

Just a Stub

He realized that there wasn't any possibility of him getting to his laundry. Not at this hour of the night, or depending on how you looked at it, the wee hours of the morning. He'd always liked to think of himself as an early riser, who apparently shunned the orthodox methods of falling asleep before the act of getting up and simply bypassing being unconscious altogether. That, he'd thought, was really just cutting out the middle man.

No one had really thought it necessary to tell him that sleeping wasn't the destination, but the journey.

Not a stiff yet

Apologies to my blog.

Work has been piling and there've been many things that've happened that can't be squished into words without much effort and self discipline.

I'm incapable of both, unfortunately.

This blog isn't dead though. It's just... going to be comatose for a bit. And starting to smell.

I'm not even trying here.

A lot has happened, but first it probably deserves mention that I just had what can actually be considered my first bowl of instant noodles in the hostel.

Alright, so ten minuets or so is stretching the definition of instant to the lengths of "not agonizingly slow", and it's not really the first meal (again, elastic definitions here) of noodles that I've ever had in the hostel, since that putrid polysterene-packed pasta technically counts, but I've never actually experienced the joys of having a steaming bowl, that isn't saturated with CFC, of noodles in the hostel. Until now.

The beauty of the entire moment was tragically stomped into the layers of dust on my room floor when the noodles didn't really taste that good.

I really need to get meatballs or ham. Anything to go with the noodles. And come to think of it, I ought to get noodles.

I'm counting on my hopes that Zeyang never finds out.

But while I'm on the topics of simple joys, I've found a source of euphoria: an alternative to simultaneous decapitation, dismemberment, and dismebowelment, followed by the hearty, alcohol laced bellows of a black scottish cyclops. I've discovered Captain's Ball down at the school track at five in the evening, once every few days or so.

It's especially fun when I get on one of the chairs and everyone starts overcompensating for what is apparently my towering stature. These poorly thought out tosses often result in someone in the canteen spilling his or her drink then swearing very loudly.

But now there's work to do, and I'd better get to it.

Of Plays and Pulling Plugs

Well, pus.

It looks like the play might not be going on after all. This means that those two weeks of surviving nights on nothing but sheer willpower, coffee, and sleep are probably going down the drainhole that the admin just unplugged, although in fairness, it's also sucking down any chance of this pandemic getting any worse, so I suppose the sacrifice of having our play solicit with RNA viruses in the sewage might be for a worthy cause.

I'm not really sure how to respond to this whole debacle. On one hand, we spent over a month drafting up concepts and writing, and we would really like to just perform it, but on the other hand that has unkempt fingernails that have been to unmentionable places and should have been washed a long time ago if it wasn't for the fact that its owner was a lazy prick, by the time we get this approved, it'll be next week, and that would mean little over a week (if we're lucky) of rehearsals.

That I think, strictly falls under the category of the ridiculous, so if the play's cancelled, it's a bit of a double edged sword, and I can't say that I regret having worked on this script, although just on principle I am angry at the administration.

Well, not really.

Shit is happening.

Well, the world's a mess, but there's no reason that Iran should.

Go on ahead and read up:

Timeline of major events in Iran and explanation detailing their Rubik's Cube governance system:

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_political/3354654.html

Twitters you should follow:

http://twitter.com/ProtesterHelp
http://twitter.com/NextRevolution

And something to stop you from unintentionally killing someone:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html

Shit is happening in Iran and the least we could do is at least follow it with the power of the Interwebs. To quote the fervent, boiling-over-with-righteous-fury Iran election guru Abbeh:

"The revolution will not be televised, it will be tweeted."

A Trek To and Through

He walked, or rather waded, through the thick, sticky air. Stickiness wasn't a property that you'd commonly associated with air, but unorthodox as it was, this air knew its stickiness inside out. That is, inside and outside of buildings. Even within the giant refrigerator that doubled as a shopping mall, the stickiness of the air was still there, but merely masked underneath the skin's mutually exclusive nature when it came to feeling stickiness and coldness.

He walked past a food court, where the scent of freshly cooked omelette creeped its way through the viscous atmosphere, and found its way to his nostrils. He took a deep, hospitable breath, but timed it wrong and inhaled just as he walked past the nearby dumpster. His lungs quickly kicked out the stinking, drunken stench out of the respectable premises of his respiratory system.

He wasn't here to skulk around the bins though. Where he was headed to was the park just across the road, which also doubled as a line drawn between the park and garbage bag territory. Nothing, even smells, passed across that motorway from one side to the other. This agreement was facilitated by the thick mist of exhaust, ensuring that if any smells DID find their way to the other side of the road, the leftovers of ignited gasoline would bury them quickly.

Scaling the overhead bridge, he found himself looking at a tall grey tower, constricted by two red frames of metal that didn't serve any purpose other than to hastily draw attention away from the dull grey. They twisted around the rigid, honest-to-god perfectly vertical slab of grey, but not smoothly in a perfect spiral. They opted for an approximation of a spiral, shooting off in a straight line and then changing direction sharply at a rigid angle. The overall effect was something that sort-of-spiralled, but wasn't too concerned with the details.

He didn't see the two electronic billboards at the side of the tower until he followed the curved path down from the overhead bridge. These boards displayed the sides of dice, and every few seconds or so they jumbled themselves and displayed a different number. He'd known from his previous but equally misguided visits to the park that this was the dice tower, built to administrate the overall board game theme of the park. There was a Ludo garden somewhere off to the left and a Snakes and Ladders trail to the right, but the subtle infusion of plant life into these "boards" meant that no one knew that they were supposed to be life-sized game boards. So everyone tragically assumed that the dice tower's flickering billboards were to be addressed by National Parks, which of course, didn't do anything about the non-existent malfunctions. So the dice tower stood there, faithfully jumbling its electronic dice once every few seconds, but for no reason at all.

He realized that he could see the billboards clearly today, owing to the absence of an easily discernable sun. Today, a glare guard had been fitted over the sky. The normally distinct circular glow of the sun became what the glow of a lightbulb behind a sheet of frosted glass became: a panel of light.

Following no road in particularly except one based on avoiding the groups of indian workers spread out across the park with almost nomadic inconsistency. (It really wasn't so much of a racial thing. He would have avoided groups of chinese workers, or even just chinese people in general, as long as they were bigger than he was. Even if they had been individually smaller than him he would have summed up their body masses while calculating the odds.)

The thought that this geometrically planned picnic mat of nature in a field of concrete and people was a good place to get lost occured to him. Unfortunately the thought had occured to a few other people as well, thus ruining the prospect of getting lost for every one of them.

(Would you look at that! It has been continued! Well, a little bit. I think the tone of writing in the previous paragraphs that I liked so much has slipped under the table and rolled off somewhere to germinate and scoff at meatball trees in a couple of years time.)

Horrigins
A review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

There are valuable life lessons to be learnt from the colossally proclaimed treasure trove of rotting cheese that is Hollywood, and just today, I learnt that things in life tend to work themselves out as long as you snarl a lot and have the ability to sprout bone claws from your knuckles.

And that seems to be what the entire of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is about. The entire movie can be very aptly summed up as Hugh Jackman snarling a lot and stabbing people, and when he's not stabbing people, partaking in all manner of socially unacceptable actions and brooding in the dark shirtless. In an attempt to really highlight his pursuits of the intellectual, he takes a merry jog across a meadow naked.

But Jackman's revelations aside, there are many things to be said about this movie, and they're best said after acknowledging that there are two possible audiences for this film.

The first is inevitably the armies of X-Men fandom that walk amongst us unseen. Quite fortunately, I don't happen to be a part of this demographic all that much. My background knowledge about Wolverine and the other mutants that star in this series of moving pictures is best summed up as everything that's on Wikipedia, and easily accessible to anyone who's looking for some entertainment if Youtube videos won't load at a pace that isn't rivalled by that of the Blob's. (Alright, alright, I just found out after reading the wikipedia article on the Blob that he's able to run fairly fast. But shut up now, this only proves my point.)

The second possible audience for this film is consists of anyone who's looking for a spectacular potpourri of explosions, sparks, and people leaping at each other while yelling battle cries that would make Leonidas cringe.

The third completely non-existent (statistically) audience is composed of hopefuls that think that there's the potential that Origins might actually have a decent amount of character development and intellectually stimulating dialogue. To get a better idea of my opinion on this after watching the movie, picture someone hoping that the movie will possess the aforementioned qualities, in the form of a thought bubble hovering about their heads. Now picture this thought bubble being viciously shredded to pieces by a furious Hugh Jackman who is now standing behind the doomed hopeful while panting very, very heavily, claws fully extended.

Allow me to explain this whole thing by giving a bit of an introduction to the movie. Origins covers the a-bit-of-a-bloody-giveaway origins of the mutant Wolverine, from X-Men, who possesses the ability to sprout bone claws from his knuckles and regenerate a ridiculous amount of flesh and bone (No, really. I'm not just referring to the inexplicable protagonist shield. He really does have this power.) It basically starts off with him as a rather sickly child sulking in the 19th century. His fate as a the subject of a blockbuster movie allows him to live all the way till the present day while looking exactly the same, all the while slaughtering chockloads of people with his half brother Sabertooth. Eventually the snarling duo join some secret government team of mutants and go around abusing African villagers, which upsets Wolverine deep inside his fuzzy heart and makes him leave.

You can see precisely where this is going.

I can't really give away anymore of the storyline because that would spoil the entire thing, but thank goodness that isn't really possible, since Origins is going to disappoint hardcore comic fans and anyone who so much dares to hope for a storyline. Comic canon is broken even more than the realism of the human physique in this movie, and the storyline is can essentially be summed up as a series of events, which in all of them, Wolverine gets extremely angry at a particular person and proceeds to try and stab him, while slaughtering and intimidating boring, blank slates of ordinary people and other mutants. The whole thing simply feels like an excuse for Hugh Jackman to rip things apart while snarling. The whole thing seems to be stitched together and even Hugh Jackman's regenerative abilities wouldn't save it.

But I hear you say "Ah, but kind sir. Is that not a perfectly legitimate direction for a blockbuster movie to take? Things blowing up and innocent African villages being terrorized are perfectly acceptable forms of entertainment." This would have been fine (except the terrorising of African villagers.) had it been executed with more flair. During the course of this automated beat em' up, Wolverine performs many action movie staples, such as being chased by a chopper while on a bike, and then proceeding to destroy both to an equal extent, despite the fact that he wasn't even trying to do that to one of them. He does plenty of pouncing and stabbing and so on, but all of it feels rather bland and doesn't feel like anything we haven't already seen. Most of the action is really just composed of Wolverine or his brother being stabbed in someplace nasty, which the audience responds to by cringing and making a plethora of supposedly sympathizing sounds, but that's all there is to the action. This is inevitably trouble since that's all there might have had been to begin with.

So that's what the entire thing is: A series of rather bland action scenes stitched together by a dilute storyline that swooshes down the drain without much fuss. If you've got ten dollars or so that you need to desperately rid yourself off because they have a terrible secret written on them that marks you as the target for some undoubtedly religiously funded organization of assassins, then by all means, purchase a ticket for X-Men Origins: Wolverine and leave the cinema pondering that maybe fleeing from those assasins in the two hours spent watching the film would have been vastly more thrilling.

Walking a Lonely Rope 

This seems to be an odd thing, and in fact completely impossible, thing be doing in a building, and in a very small room, in fact, but I'm walking on a tightrope. I've been doing that since nearly a year ago, before which I was rather contented to stand on the side of the tightrope and watch people nearly teeter over and point at them and go "Whoa, that guy nearly teetered over!" 

Well, I suppose there must have been something appealing about it, since a while later I jumped on (or rather, was dragged on by a group of very persistant people and after a while, I found that I rather liked it). So for a solid nine months, I've been walking on this not-so-much-solid-as-wobbly tightrope (that you've provided figured out is metaphorical by now and if you haven't, then never attempt a conversation with say, Mr Valles) and I've found several things to be true. 

It's very hard to overtake people when you're on the tightrope, and when you try doing that you end up falling over because people that are in front eventually get annoyed after a while and inevitably start displaying their amazing ability to kick behind them while still staying on the tightrope. So after a while you decide you might as well just admire their posteriors and tiptoe behind them at a pace that could almost be described as "merry", except that there's nothing very "merry" about the whole business of getting kicked if you don't. 

It's also fiendishly difficult just staying on the infernal cord. It gets very tempting at times to simply lean over to one side, since you've got the justification that you could quite easily compensate by leaning over to the other side ready, which comes in quite handy when you're looking for an explanation as to how you ended up lying down and staring up at people walking on a tightrope, the point at which the you now might turn to the you then and very sardonically raise one eyebrow and declare this whole idea to be "Perfectly executed". The response is usually silence, although if the fall was traumatic enough a "shut up" might be heard. 

So what I'm doing right now is creeping along on this piece of rope, hoping that I don't fall and if I do, then someone might think me lying in the mud an eyesore and yank me out (Quiet, children) of it and slap me down (I said settle down) onto the line that seems to be standing in for a compass that said it'd be back in a while and it just had to settle this one thing. 

I hope it gets back soon, because everytime I look at my feet I know precisely how I stand on the line. 

Squatting Ideas

Every so often, and I really mean this, I'll find myself sitting in a school canteen where dustbins have been liberated of the social obligation to wear their lids, and I'll hear a distant voice of a rather nasal and high pitched quality proclaim something nearly as annoying as itself. 

These incidents happen to coincide very closely with the times in which I start weighing all the pros and cons of the Internet. Usually, the nasally voice is allowed to continue with its gummy bear muffled ramblings since the alternative would mean me getting closer to its source, but I still can't help but wonder during those moments whether the Internet's advantages outweigh the terrible scourge of most Internet memes. 

Yes, that's going to be the topic of this article, and while you're probably digging trenches for the rhetoricky, rant-ish invasion about why can't all these people just grow up and start making up phrases of their own, that's only going to be part of this article. The other part is hopefully going to be a soulful attempt to remember what memes used to be. The end of this paragraph's probably a good place to start, so let's get to it then. 

Memes, when you boil away the thick black coating of Rickrolls and bodily fluid exchange, are really just recurring or continuous ideas within a society that are transmitted from one mind to another by way of a completely mentionable act: communication. And that's never been easier (seeing as how technology tends to get better in every aspect other than eco-friendliness when going forward in time) given advent of the Internet, phones and large buildings with nice hollow spaces right in their middles which make it very hard for you to have affairs (or one, if you'd like) with your attractive secretary(s). 

So with the mention of the Internet and its ability to proliferate memes like a cold does in a Chinese train, the thought of testing the durability of your router may have occured to you. But hold that thought for a second. Memes are something more. (No, just put the router down. Really. It's not going to be worse.) 

Every form of "received wisdom" is a meme. The concept of wearing clothing (some, at least) in public or not going spelunking in your nostrils (those who do have developed apathy shields that would greatly ensure their survival in the event that Halley's Comet came over to grab its belongings. So on further reflection we're mostly safe.)  are all memes. They're generally well accepted ideas that have been deeply rooted into many different cultures, and the cultures that don't have these memes are either exiled or considered "damned outrageous". And the thing is, many memes have served us well, because without memes, it would be practically impossible to get anything done with large groups of people (With the exception of rioting. On second thought, scratch that. Rioting's no exception.) because of the absence of a common idea or set of ideas that unifies them in some way. If it weren't for the meme that stealing and murdering were bad, we wouldn't have a legal system. If it weren't for the meme that goats are by no means a form of standardized (or vending machine compatible) currency, we wouldn't have, well, currency. 

Memes, we can clearly see at this point, are ludicrously two sided (the number of two sides there are is impossible to conceive). It can either be the trusty concrete that we have our riots on or the sewer of humanity where our last hope, in the form of very talented humanoid turtles, lies. So the problem isn't the existence of memes, but rather recognizing which ones should be existings and which ones shouldn't. 

Because while memes can be useful foundational ideas, they can also become the equivalent of soft plywood supports for one of those kampong houses. It seemed like a great idea at the time when the rest of the house was made of soft plywood and its inhabitants consisted of the ocassional hummingbird that would fly off once the boards started creaking, but when its inhabitants atart consisting of walking things the whole thing starts to fall apart. 

My point here is that memes can squat on mental chairs that should really be given to new ideas after a good dusting. While some foundational memes may have been excellent several decades ago, they start to lose their appeal and usefulness today. (The example of wearing clothing comes in here again, and it's nice to know that we're going full circle and that all we need to do is start talking to serpents again.) The problem with getting rid of such memes, though, is that they really don't want to get off their arses, because some have been so deepy imbedded in our culture that getting rid of them seems unthinkable. (Like say, in the case of hoping for a Hollywood film that doesn't have a romance thrown in like soya sauce on ice cream.) 

So they sit there and shove away any new ideas that want to so much as offer them some Pocky. They end up being there for the sake of being there, and then the process of creating new ideas starts making funny gurgling noises that aren't very funny at all in retrospect. 

Internet memes being used so often in some conversations is a clear example of this. Once people start using those memes as placeholders for phrases that haven't been echoed by at least one world, then no other ideas can. 

Memes need to be constantly rexamined to make sure that they aren't irrelevant, and deciding whether they're irrelevant or not is going to take a lot of notepaper and a good supply of Pocky. 

Persuasive Accomodation

A few hours ago I did so relieve myself of the loads that made me suspect for a brief moment that I might have been detained for illegal immigration, and in a startling moment I flopped down (More of a roll on my back. The legs did flop down though, if that's any comfort) on my hostel bed and uttered one of the more startling things of the week.

"Yay, I'm back." 

I'm trying desperately to rationalize this action as simply having been a slip of the tongue into oblivion, and then I realize, with several generous servings of dismay sprinkled lightly with stir fried hopelessness, that the expression (the smug bastard) is probably right. I've seen the hostel so often that it's probably becoming my default accomodation, whereas my actual home is becoming something akin to one of those summer houses in Zanzibar that you can only take the word of your estate agent that it still exists. 

So for the time being, I've been constantly reminding myself of the perils of hostel life to hopefully bump this hostel room down a bit on my list of preferred accomodation, and since the list consists of two kinds of accomodation at this point, my actual home and this room, then it shouldn't be too hard to bump it down to the required level of tastelessness. 

So if anyone does see me in the hostel, please try your best to make my stay here as unbearable as possible. 

Spotfrights


Few roles in a play let you feel as close to divinity as fiddling around with the lighting. And I'm not talking about fiddling with a set of tiny switches backstage while you tell yourself that truly, this is as close as you get to divinity. I'm talking about sitting in the control room, pompously or not, depending on your choice, and getting what is perhaps the most authoratative view in the entire theatre and then deciding who gets to be visible on-stage. Believe me when I say that power trips are equally likely to happen with the director and the elevated elite in the control room.

At least, that's the impression you get of the job at first, until you're tasked with something requiring about three hands and fingers of lengths that would anger any pianist into attacking you. The moment you enter the control room in your (well, my, actually) hazey power trip, you are greeted with a panaroma of knobs and switches that would look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's been to one of those open houses showcasing cockpit interiors.

There's what can only be described as an absolute spread of switches in the control room, and that's for lighting alone. There are fill light switches for nine sections of the stage, individual spotlights for each of those nine sections, then an additional larger spotlight for each of those nine sections again. Then there's additional switches for adjusting the color of the cyclorama (A funky screen that would have appealed greatly to the Beatles. Basically a screen disguised as a wall at the back of the stage that can change color in the most psychedellic manners.), and finally two random switches for side stage spotlights. I think that covers about three quarters of the switches. There's an additional (a very trendy word by this point) quarter somewhere that probably requires the synchronized turning of two keys or something along those lines.

Anyway, it's this mind boggling number of switches that really makes the lighting job very difficult. The nice lady that was kind enough not to leave us floundering (mostly out of concern for the equipment) drew us a reference diagram of sorts for the different numbers of the lights and which portions of the stages they corresponded to. It really did make things a lot simpler so all me and Damien were left with was frustration. Since the diagram wasn't divided into a table with labels like A3 or B4 or anything that would help you visualize positions, and so the switches weren't labelled in that manner, we ended up having to constantly refer to the tiny table scrawled (very kindly) in blue ink under the pseudo-illumination of the small lamp that you're allowed during the operation of the lighting, since the control room is apparently tasked with the role of housing the invisible machinations that run the show from behind.

So we did a rather shoddy job of allowing the hypothetical audience to see the faces of our undoubtedly nervous, and therefore grateful actors. But something rather surprising happened halfway through the last run.

We started improvising a bit. As opposed to referring to the terribly written (by us, I should add) set of lighting cues based on the script, we started improvising. We knew what was going to happen when and where, so we started referring to the diagram (not written by us, I should add again) and turning up whatever lights we thought were necessary. All this in very angry whispers in the dark.

I suppose as you do this again and again the numbers corresponding to the different lights become a vital part of your anatomy, and that would explain the labelling deficiency, and clearly we've yet to achieve that.

But regardless, it was fun, and it really was the sort of thing that's going to keep me from throwing my arms up and yelling at the people in the control room "How hard can it be to get some damned lights on?"

Footnotes while on the Run

Hello there.

A bit of brief writing before I return to bed from whence I crawled.

I was just in the process of rushing an application for the purposes of entering the mystical NRP, or Nanyang Research Programme, if you're pedantic about that sort of thing or if you're giving a speech and you have to let the nice ladies and gentlemen know precisely what they're attending the speech for.

The whole process of signing up for the project was a bit finicky, but I suppose that's all part of the process of being incredibly complicated. Well, not really. I can't really complain, though a terrible misintepretation about the concepts of am and pm led to my submission of the form being about ten hours late, which somehow seems more erroneous than one day when you write it down.

There hasn't really been much time for writing over the last two days, and the barrage of tests will finally descend into rancid waters while waving their neatly typed tentacles in the air and making all manner of screeching noises, then it'll probably take about a week or so for them to reemerge the very badly damaged (though still freshly shiny) reactor of a long-sunken nuclear submarine that was previously unaccounted for.

Quite honestly I'll be quite glad once this whole test period is over.

I mean, life's about doing the other work, isn't it?

Of Knee Jerks and Explosives


It was not a few weeks ago that I sat rather dismayed in the school canteen, and was bracing myself for the increasingly threatening AP Chemistry class looming on the horizon, its view denied to me by the school (compound). After a while I gave up trying to stare through opaque concrete and look like whatever organs in my body were responsible for generating hope had been extracted by way of liposuction, I attempted to proceed up the stairs when I was stopped by the principal in this particular course of action.

Well, I wasn't really stopped by the principal. Not directly at least, though he did hint that he would appreciate if I wasn't in my class by making an announcement calling for a gathering in the school hall, a gathering that was to be attended by a good amount of everyone.

So about five nerve wracking, nostril assaulting minutes later I found myself seated in the hall next to an entire row (or column, depending on whether you were viewing everything from a bird's eye view, which if you weren't, would mean that that particular group of students would be standing on seated one each other's shoulders) of people with bags of kimchi that were digging away at the side of their Ziploc bags with spoons they managed to sneak out of the compound's cafeteria.

This continued for a good twenty minutes or so, during which we were continuously reminded to contact anyone that wasn't here to make sure that they weren't in danger of being harmed by whatever was in the school compound (or not), not that there was necessarily any danger since that hadn't been announced yet, but it was absolutely vital that anyone missing was to be accounted for, lest they... not be here.

And after what seemed analogous to a nervous, tie-wearing, thick spectacled acountant finally getting down on his knees beside a gorgeous woman that he's known for about twenty minutes and popping the question, the administration finally called upon the superintendant from the nearby police station to give us a bit of an exposition as to why there was no reason to panic.
The reason why there was no reason to panic was that a "war relic" had been discovered in a construction site not far off from the school, and while there wasn't any danger to anyone in the school, our rather convenient distance from the war relic made us a candidate (and winner) for being a base of operations for the getting-rid-of-war-relic procedures.

And it was at that point that a good amount of atmospheric murmuring (rather loud murmuring, as the sound of over a thousand people speaking in hushed voices tends to be) was heard, though the superintendant did say that wasn't anything to be worried about and that the disposal and school hijacking procedures were completely safe to anyone that wasn't the kind of person that wanders into construction sites for no reason.

Dr Hang then concluded with the stirring instruction that we all bugger off for the rest of the day to ensure that we didn't annoy the nice policemen, save for those staying in the hostel, of course, who buggered off across the field to wander about the structural integrity of its foundations.
So that was a rather eventful episode, but what was particularly interesting was the reactions of the school population.

Before the news was broken, there was a ridiculous amount of frantic speculation, and a good number of people looking very grim and staring into the distant clouds, commenting that if the administration was doing its best to account for every single person in the school then there was sure to be a proper reason for such measures, and that reason was probably almost as grim as they were.

There was also an observable population that was rather prophetic, insisting that they had heard from credible sources that could not be named that it was most definitely a bomb that they had discovered nearby.

There was a good number of people annoyed at the twenty minute wait, and there was at least one individual that was annoyed by the nearby scent of kimchi.

The varying degree of responses to the single event of an assembly that not yet justified is interesting, and to a certain degree, amusing.

This amusement is further fed by the crowd's reactions after the reason for the assembly was revealed. Some immediately started looking for nearby exit signs while others evangelized the truth of the "war relic" being explosives. There seemed to be a recurring theme of either "the police aren't telling us the truth of what the relic is" or "the police aren't telling us that we're not actually safe". And to the latter response, you have to ask the question: Why?

Why wouldn't the authorities (a more faceless, authoritarian term for "police" here) reveal that we were in danger, and proceed to evacuate us if we were? While there existed the possiblity that they wanted to keep panicking to a minimum, there wouldn't have been much possiblity of it spontaneously detonating after it was discovered and the authorities were alerted, and there wouldn't have been any chance that they would have started working on sending it on its merry, explodey way till everyone was safely evacuated. The suspicion that the authorities or the government is hiding vital information from the people it is meant to protect/ the country's citizens is a knee jerk reaction that could potentially make someone walk funny if we aren't careful.

But maybe these suspicions are vital to maintaining the integrity of our national system. If we enquire, we open the possiblity of ignorance. But all that considered, surely we could have done that in a manner that didn't involve flailing our arms to make references to Hindu mythology.
And the twitch reaction aside, there was the rather paradoxical reaction of cheering after Dr Hang declared the rest of the day to be absolutely nothing. It was a rather impressive leap from people construction conspiracy theories and fearing for their lives to overall cheerfulness at the prospect of a break for the rest of the day.

That was nowhere near the leap of witnessing my entire cluster gather in a single room and cheering at the aftermath of the bomb actually being disposed off in a completely un-subtle fashion. And as I stood there trying to get a glimpse of the disappointingly, not-very-devastated construction site, I thought to myself, we sure have strange selection of responses to the prospect of adversity.

Dear Diary

Hello there WordPad. There's been something I've been meaning to discuss with you lately, and it's about the whole concept of people talking to inanimate objects. No, no one needs any help of any sort. I'm talking about something that's fairly commonplace and that people don't really take issue to much. I'm talking (for about the second time now) about the topic of diaries.

No one really seems to be bothered by the fact that when someone writes in a diary, they're not recording the events of their day for the purposes of tabulation, or to maximize their door opening efficiency. What people that write diaries are really doing is talking to an inanimate object. They tell their tiny little books about things that happened today at work that are responsible for the creases on the back cover of the very same book, and that they're very sorry about creasing it, but they just need to get this all out so that they feel much better.

Diaries become a form of very submissive, accomodating, and in all aspects, incapacitated confidants. They can't really argue back about how compromise would have been a great thing in that situation or that the writer really is that much of a hindrance to the mental processes of others. In fact, when you think about, they can't really agree with anyone either.

Or maybe some people don't use a diary for the purposes of ranting. Some uses them to record thoughts and ideas and fantasies and the sort of things that would get them funny looks and would most probably end up having their daily actions recorded by someone else.

What diaries offer is something that human beings simply aren't capable of offering, and that also means that neither is a substitute for the other. Diaries are an entirely different market in terms of social interaction. They provide a neither agreeing, nor disagreeing companion, that doesn't say a word till you're done, and in fact, doesn't say a word once you're done anyway. What they offer is something that you can talk to without ever having your unique or strange ideas and perspective shot down before you've had a chance to fully get them out. Diaries are essentially psychological vaccum cleaners.

Wouldn't you agree?

Things that Rooms Say

One of the greatest frustrations I've experienced when it comes to writing is that when I set out to do it, I usually don't get very much done at all. The creative process usually involves me sitting at my desk, tapping the table as if trying to extract whatever ideas might be burrowing under its nonchalant woody surface, and often shifting over to lean on the hand I'm not leaning on, possibly under the assumption that if the screen in front of me is viewed at a particular angle, magical glowing words will emerged from the sparkling ruins of the screen and present me with an idea.

Another of the greatest frustrations I've experienced when it comes to writing is that I just can't seem to do it in a word processor. This doesn't make much sense at the first thought given my legal history with handwriting, but what I mean here is that I can never seem to write an article or blog entry when I'm trying to do it in a word processor, yet ideas gush out at a rate envied by Asian floods whenever I talk to somebody on Windows Live Messenger. It's the most infuriating sensation to have had a wonderful conversation (Misnomer really. The person on the other end usually just sits there and blinks, and coughs up a one word response like "okay".) with someone, and then to sit and stare at what you've written over the last five minutes only to realize that it would have been a lot more beneficial to your literary ego had you done all of that in a word processor, as opposed to chucking the lot at some bewildered person who really just wants to get on with reading sappy fanfiction.

And the exact thing happened to me not too long ago when I had a conversation with Kylie about rooms. The subject of the conversation was initially how barren and depressed her room looked like after she had taken all of her postcards, posters, poems and alliterations down to accomodate her brother whom she was letting to move in because she was "nice". The subject then shifted to what her brother had in his room and how the very same room that she thought looked dejected would be troubled and deranged given a month's time. And then I commenced my solliloquy regarding rooms.

Rooms seem to say things, and while this is the sort of thing that could very well earn me a jacket with comically long sleeves I don't mean this in the literal sense. Rooms are mostly mute, but a quality they do seem to possess is the ability to convey a certain message based on the things in them.

Even an empty room says something, usually something something along the lines of "Hello, I'm empty. I don't really like this."
A room painted a eye-eviscerating pink would probably convey the message that it desires is the state's recognition of its freedom, while a room painted a relaxing coffee colour with patterned lampshades, a somewhat obese looking sofa possibly responsible for the obesity of people, and with all floral curtains drawn urges you in a reserved, butlery sort of voice to "let me take your hat and jacket for you sir, just sit down and I'll fetch you your loungue jacket." Rooms, as a whole including the things that are in them, seem to tell you precisely what their purpose is.

My hostel room, for instance, seems to constantly remind me in a mental voice befitting of humorless public relations officer that I am currently residing in an institution, and that I should probably take a rest so that I may resume my studies the next day and achieve great things and possibly break a few ethics along the way. The overall demeanour of the room tells me that I'm in a building built for the purposes of educational accomodation, and that I can't deny it. But precisely what it is that gives me that impression, I can't quite say. Perhaps it's the stock-like feeling off the room, so much that you can imagine thousands of the same room being churned out in automated factories in China and shipped over in plastic packages, but overall it does say "Sleep here so you can study later."

My hostel room also occasionally tells me it's probably time for the 10:35 role call, though it's a while later that I find out that that room happens to have actually come from China, and enjoys sleeping with nothing but striped underwear on. About a minute later I find out that that was my roommate, and not really much of a room at all.

And amidst all this imaginary conversations with accomodation I'm not quite sure why rooms seem to say anything at all. Maybe it's the accumulated features of the room by way of our contribution that speak of our personalities (or hygeine standards), which end up conveying a message, or in the case of an empty room, the lack of it. Perhaps a room is the best example of the accumulated visible effects of things that we leave behind, slowly piling together in corners the location of which you can't explain, though you're pretty sure you once knew why those things were there.

I'm not really sure how to conclude this, but I'm going to anyway by stopping right here, and might possibly hit the sack (no other word for this blast door of a mattress), and be reminded its quality.

Byestreet 21


I'm sitting in my room right now, and just for the purposes of context here, I'd like to point out that I really am sitting in my room. My room, as opposed to the room that was assigned to me that faces the highway, spouting up copious amounts of exhaust and soot, as if the drivers are trying to convey their mutual hate for me and my luxury of sleeping at that hour while they are condemned to slogging it down the highway in their comfortably air conditioned vehicles. But anyway, I really am sitting in the room belonging to me, the one facing the rather large field that spews out colonies of exotic insects that asail my room light while I express my envy at the lady who sells drinks at our school, who happens to own a bug zapper shaped like a tennis racket, with a rather intimidating lightning-bolt in the center of it. Truly, that device is the closet you will ever get to reliving Greek mythology.

Back to the topic of me being in my room: I love it. I've never quite appreciated my room, with its dastardly pink cupboards, constantly declaring their pride in their lifestyle choices, the gaudy shade of green that plagues the walls, verging on breaking into the chorus of "Give Peace a Chance", and the haphazard combination of pillows on my bed, with pillow cases of such random variety that they emulate a family with siblings of stupidly different age groups. One has clothed bears on it, apparently going through some sort of species identity crisis, while another seems to be channelling its desire to be a kaleidoscope. But while they're all so terribly gaudy they're an essential part of the monstrosity that is my room. And I've never really been very fond of it until the point where seeing the same room appear in every single door on nearly every single floor got slightly monotonous at times. The rooms in the hostel differ only in terms of which tired, homesick people they contain, so it's refreshing to be blinded by the psychedelic qualities of my room again.

But it wasn't so much my room that I thought about after returning from a fairly gruelling day of setting people on fire and pushing back carts filled with explosives that could possibly set people on fire. I had a brief exchange with the wonderful Irsyad (this here being just for him) on what we would first do upon getting home (our respective ones), and I did so reply that the first thing I would do would be to get a pot, pour some water into it and set fire to that water, then once that water had enough I would proceed to unload a good chunk of noodles, an egg, and a few frozen wantons into the mixture, then let it burn a bit more just to make a point. The point being that I would probably be really hungry by then, and that I couldn't remember the last time I cooked noodles for supper in the whimsically described "wee hours" of the night (possibly morning based on the general wee-ness of the day/night at that point), though I can remember that it definitely wasn't in the last three weeks.

So while I was actually doing that, I stood around and admired the semi-sheen that the kitchen floor had. I wasn't used to it, since over the last three weeks I had been more accustomed to admiring how much of the floor I could see. There were a few specks of dirt near the stove, but drastically different compared to the few specks of stove in the hostel pantry.

At that point the contents of the pot aimed to change that and it occurred to me that I should probably adhere to the Geneva Convention and just eat the damn thing.

It was very tasty. Very much tastier than I had remembered it being. But then again, maybe it wasn't so much the actual food that was tasty, which I thought was the only possible case till this point. Maybe it was the clean chairs that contributed to the tastiness of the noodles, hopefully through indirect means. Maybe it was the fact that I could finally cook that bowl of noodles that made it so much tastier. Maybe it was everything but the food that made it so good.

I remember, this sentence adding at least twenty years to my age just by writing it, that there used to be a restaurant called Baystreet 21 at IMM. It had a very conservative, leathery sort of colour scheme to it, and there were dim hanging lights that exhumed photoscopic veils onto the tables. There was also this big wooden board with a ship relief carved onto it. Soft lounge music would play in the background while you carved into your Dory, making the lounge music an impromptu hymn, but that's killing my point here. My point is that it was cozy. It felt sophisticated and comfortable. The food may not be as good as I remembered, but the actual place definitely was.

Now, the place has been renovated into a diner's about as organized as my pillows, with very large tomatoes and lettuce covering the walls of the place, some of which were provided by customers leaving in disgust. The whole place looks like a McDonald's branch, and the only thing missing here is a Reminiscence meal of some kind. The food isn't even that good anymore. But then again, maybe the food just as good as it used to be. Maybe it's not the actual food that's declined, but the overall restaurant. But then again, maybe what I remembered it to be simply appears so perfect because of nostalgia or some other vague poetic term. Maybe that warm, pleasant Baystreet 21 never really was that toasty and enjoyable, but I still miss it all the same.